 The consequences in Asia have been revealed to us
by a remarkable group of over three hundred letters, part of the royal
records stored in one of Ikhnaton’s government offices at Amarna. Here
they had lain for over three thousand years, when they were found some
years ago by native diggers. They are written on clay tablets (§
147), in Babylonian writing (§
148). Most of these letters proved to be from the kings of Western
Asia to the Pharaoh, and they form the oldest international correspondence
in the world (Fig. 126). They show
us how these kings were gradually shaking off the rule of the Pharaoh,
so that the Egyptian Empire in Asia was rapidly falling to pieces. The
Pharaoh’s northern territory in Syria (see map
I, p. 184) was being taken by the Hittites, who came in from
Asia Minor (§ 359), while his
southern territory in
|
|